Question About Acquiring The Goods

I have a lot on my mind, in no particular order.... It would be really nice to be able to play while "letting my fingers" go, and to not have to curve the fingers to get a sense of control. It really is a false sense of control, because there are times when I play much more effortlessly and accurately with "loose" fingers that aren't held curved and guided for accuracy. I have tried several times over the years to streamline my technique using a more relaxed hand, simple finger motion, and not bothering to curve as much as I used to... it works for a time, but then I get a sense of insecurity, like my fingers start becoming more and more sloppy. I end up having to repeat things over and over in very perfunctory fashion, and because I the relaxed technique makes it easy to work in tempo, I end up repeating things in tempo ad nauseum, and the practicing gets really mechanical, really fast. But then I watch I favorites-- like Horowitz, Gould, and argerich, and I see that their hands are not being held in a taut position. They are not over-articulating, in fact their playing is quite effortless and facile. And I doubt they practice any different then they play, right? So, how did they get their hands to work that way... to have that automatic arch that never fails-- which is always there to serve their ears and minds and so forth? I have this secret idea that if I practice things with a more articulate finger technique a la Evgeny Kissin/Pogorelich/Gavrilov, then once I nail it that way, then I can relax my hand, and start to get the colors and subtlety that Horowitz, Gould, etc. can get with their flatter hand position and freer (at least they look freer!) finger and hand positions. I wonder if there is some truth to this? Here is my thinking--- A lot of asian pianists have brilliant, amazing technique. Yuja Wang, Lang Lang, et al... we have heard about the hours of hard work the pianists in China put in, and how disciplined their upbringing is. It seems that the Chinese really emphasize finger technique; there is a lot of Hanon, Czerny, and technical excercises and so forth. If you watch videos of Yuja when she was younger, it is a much more "schooled" technique she had back then... you can see she probably busted her butt practicing to perfection; it's a much more finger-y style of playing, at least as I see it, then the way she plays now. Now she seems to have a very free hand, a perfect arch structure, and a huge variety of colors. But... did she have to go through one to get to the other? Also look at Lang lang... now he can do all sorts of things, like holding has wrists really high on chords, playing with a very flat hand, or playing with very curved fingers... he has it all... but did he have to do good old-fashioned finger technique, before he could let go, and let the colors flow, without losing the security? Next... if you watch these black and white silent movies of Horowitz playing at a dinner party... you can see him pouncing on chords, with a very elastic wrist and amazing tautness of attack... but his fingers seem quite curved! They look a lot more curved, and a lot more taut than the Horowitz of later years that I am used to watching... with those spidery fingers that often merely brush or pet the keys, or strike with an immediate release of tension. Now, I know that there are times when Horowitz employs curved fingers- in Scarlatti or Mozart at times, for example, so he obviously can do it if he wants to.... but when I watched those old videos, it seemed like back then Horowitz played somewhat differently... like I said, with more curved, taut, fingers, and much more visible finger articulation. Was this phase necessary, so that as the years went by, he could gradually let go more, experience the endless color variety inherent in the piano, without losing the structure of the hand? Because his hand arch is always intact, yet it looks like he doesn't have to maintain it at all... it's just there, all the time. Fingers can be completely loose in the knuckle, and they don't break down at all. You see... I have never really been able to sustain the flatter finger technique as the norm, without feeling like I am cheating, or taking the easy way out, or losing the visceral emotion that comes from the act of playing with a very active finger technique. I guess I don't do it right, because I always end up feeling like I am not giving everything I have emotionally, and that I need to go back to my old way to re-activate- not only my fingers, but my mind too! The different techniques are connected to different sound worlds and conceptions in my head, so the re-activation of a more curved finger comes with whole different interpretation/way of feeling the music. Am I perhaps right that I never acquired the sufficient finger technique to allow me to "let go" without losing my arch and my ability to make compelling music? I get this idea that I need to go back and really work on building a flawless technique in the Evgeny Kissin/Pogorelich/Gavrilov school, and then I can relax and start working on the Horowitz type technique that I've always wanted to figure out how to do in a legitimate way (not just a cheap imitation of flat fingers, silly accents, and breaking the hands up). If I took the next few years, and practiced Hanon the way Rachmaninoff and lhevinne suggest, memorizing every excercise in every key, and really doing it at high quality, taking my time to build on a foundation of rock (as Lhevinne writes), then working on Gradus ad Parnassum of Clementi and Art of Finger Dexterity, selected excercises.... would I really end up with that raw technique, the raw dexterity/mechanism that I've always been looking for. I guess it depends on how I do it! Gotta practice the right technique even with these excercises, otherwise its a waste! Sure, people say, well all you really need are Chopin Etudes and Well Tempered Clavier for technique--- playing a fugue and having to make two different voices have two different colors and shapes... that is real finger technique... yes that is true, but still, you gotta have the chops to begin with so that you can do the passagework. Chopin and Bach WTC are already so difficult and advanced, so perhaps it is better to start easier on Hanon and Czerny, Mozskowski, Clementi, Bach little preludes and fugues and build your way up to Bach WTC and Chopin? I mean, look at Liszt, retiring to his apartment for months or however long it was, and practicing nothing but scales, technique, octaves, and so on, becoming the Paganin of the keyboard- amazing. Is that what it takes to be a virtuoso, or do I not have to be quite that extreme? I guess my question is this --- they say technique can be taught... and I want to have a first-class technique. So, I want to know: what is the course of study to pursue? I am 25, and don't have all that much time to dilly-dally, so I need to figure out the plan, and not waste time on unnecessary things. If I were a litte boy in Beijing, what would they be making me do for piano? What is the regime that leads to these hundreds upon hundreds of competition winning pianists (who really do play great and have just as much emotion as the next race!), who all have this sureness about what they are doing technically... a sureness I never had! I know I can't go back, and so I might never quite catch up to Yundi or Lang Lang, but I at least want to know precisely what they had to work on, to attain the chops they have. Unless the facility really is something you are simply born with and thats it.(?) Sure there is a such thing as a physical gift (e.g. Glenn Gould), but even he had to work a lot in his youth to refine it. But this is really it... I am a very good pianist, I have quite a good technique, but I want to learn how to a acquire a world class technique. It must be possible. Sure, kids learn languages faster than adults, so I might have a harder time of it, but I have the discipline, and the passion, so I want to do it. I want to know what my technical regime ought to be.

When you talk about the elastic wrist, are you referring to a bounce of the hand on each chord. where the hand bends downward to strike the chord and then bends upward to release? By "taut", do you mean that Horowitz looked tight when playing. Arrau said that Horowitz played with incredible tension in the arms, and I wonder if that assertion is true.

I think you express pretty much what every pianist is struggling with a jever ending struggle.Many changes their technique on a regular basis and every work requires in a way many different techniques. First I think an intelligent analyses of the hand the fingers and the body proportions is a great help. A common mistake is to try to imitate the sound and technique of an idol. There is no way Rubinstein could play like Horowitz with his fat clumpsy fingers hardly reaching between the black key's. And virtuosity is more a state of mind than real technical skill. So looking for players that has similar hands and physiques might be better than struggling to imitate an idol. Secondly the few worldclass pianists I've known had one thing in common.And that is the practise method. A fanatic no compromise attitude to tiny details. An incredible slow practise in p-mf just unbeleivable and the discipline to spend like 80% of the time working-no let go no living out keeping the safety margin. Living out is for the stage. A few weeks ago I overheard a Wellknown russian pianist practising Rach#2 it was like one key every second. And they know every detail in the score. Even professionals doesn't understand the amount of work behind the performance. Or rather most musiscians just don't care. Thirdly I think Alan Frasers "method" is the best approach I've encountered on the internet so far It will alow you to explore a technique adopted to your personal abilities especially if you're already a skilled pianist. You don't even have to agree on anything. Thinking " sceletal" is just amazingly liberating. Pianoplaying is at the end of the day a management on a microlevel and that is what has improved my own playing immensly. Even my wife thinks so!

I am an amateur looking to improve my technique, so I don't think I have any authority on this issue. However, I have come to believe that all technical work should have reference to musical intention and musical . The point is not to obsessively control and monitor your body but to become more discerning and more capable so that you can express something meaningful. Even scales and arpeggios, cadences, trills and octaves are gestures. Just think of how many scales you find in any Mozart piano concerto! What counts is the intent behind the scale, its overall shape and movement. Of course attention to detail is extremely important but I think it is more about refining a gesture than getting all the notes right and perfectly even. Great musicians like Curzon, Casals Horowitz and Schnabel could spend hours on a few measures of music but this was motivated by musical concerns. Also I agree with Eric about virtuosity being "state of mind." I think it is just as important that you can classify musical shapes and textures and form so that you are prepared to handle any new variant of a pattern. These templates are partly kinesthetic. They should also be general enough to accommodate new variants. Also they should be organized hierarchically. For example if you take the kind of left hand patterns in Chopin's ballades which involve the hitting of a bass note and three chords in the middle register (A major section of the G minor being the most famous example), you will notice that if you arpeggiate the notes in the higher register instead of playing them like chords you get something like a pattern from one of his nocturnes. The resulting kinesthetic concept is more general and flexible. Sorry if this is a little "out there." It has helped me a lot in managing the topography of the instrument. I have focused more on the mental component here because I think it clarifies the role of the mind in piano technique.

I agree musical intention and gesture is the supreme guide. But I think the process is rather awkward and often has an inversed causality. More than often while practising (slowly and with freakish imagination) you discover an endless range of musical intentions. Even or especially with pieces you've played like 30 years it never ends! So it's more a question of priorities and these change all the time. You probably discover much more than the composer was aware of to be honest the composer only spent some weeks and than forgot all about it. Nobody admits they like competitions but I think they are excellent for one thing and that is to acquire technique. You play the same pieces over and over again for maybe ten years and thus constantly refine the technique and someday you make the cut somewhere. OK in the old times they didn't have them but in today's competitive world it's the only way to get a gig if you're not lucky or a new Mozart.

Well, you are correct to say that people don't necessarily approach their practice sessions with a perfectly clear aural image and work towards realizing it. The process certainly can be hit or miss and accidental. Often the body can sense something before the mind is totally aware of it. My point is not that the body should simply execute the commands of the mind but something much more subtle and difficult to express. If what you play lacks an underlying gesture it becomes un-musical and mechanical. Also it harms listening and concentration. The important thing is not to have one perfect, ideal form but to constantly generate new musical conceptions. What I am suggesting is that it is most important that you finely tune your sensitivity to the weight of the keys and the spacing of the keyboard and to develop a basic set of movements or gestures that account for all varieties of technical work. Scale practice certainly works for many people but I don't think Marc-Andre Hamelin or Glenn Gould practiced scales. Some great pianists might have been brought up on rote, mechanical practice but there is no reason to say that they succeeded of it. My views on the role of mind in piano technique are partly inspired by a book called "Busoni as Pianist" which gives some valuable insights into Busoni and Liszt's views on piano mastery. Look it up on google books. One point it makes is that you should understand all piano technique in its most basic principles and you should develop a "key" for each composer that enables you to master his ouvre quickly. The "key" involves passage work, harmony and structure. If you take Mozart for example you will notice how much he repeats passage work through his Piano Concerti. Just compare the development section of the 22nd piano concerto 1st movement to minor sections the rondo of the 23rd piano concerto and the 2nd piano quartet (the second piano quartet has a triplet variation). (Compare the transition from development to recap in the 2nd piano quartet 1st movement to the same structural moment in the 21st piano concerto 1st movement) Notice how many circle of fifths progressions and melodic shapes and rhythmic gestures run through all his works. Here is a good example of melodic shape you may or may not have noticed. Compare the rondo theme of K333 to the 1st theme of the 1st movement of the 23rd piano concerto. It is not an absolutely obvious resemblance but it is still there. My point is that you should try to focus on how composers think and conceive of the instrument and the kinesthetic feeling of their gestures. This matters more than arm weight or flat fingers vs. curved fingers.

Couldn't agree more. Thank's a lot for the tip I have admired Busoni all my life but didn't know about his book. He wrote some pretty interesting "exercises" with imaginative fingerings besides all his other totally underestimated compositions. The Tawaststierna biography of Sibelius contains some nice material about Busoni who was his (Sibelius) friend. Made Sibelius forget his plans to become a violin virtuoso- luckily for us. His violinconcero is not easy..

Yes, his exercises are really fascinating. I think they should also be taken as a point of departure for creating your own variations. Have you tried his technical variants from the well-tempered clavier? In one of his variants of the first prelude he has the left hand play the bottom note with the pinky and the top note with the second finger, a preparation for the Paganini-Liszt etude. He also wrote cadenzas to several of Mozart's piano concerti. Horowitz played one of them in his recording of the 23rd. Busoni had a truly brilliant keyboard mind and some real insight into keyboard virtuosity. His piano concerto is one of the most gigantic in the repertoire. Here is part of Marc Andre Hamelin's performance. I choose this part because the piano really cuts loose at here. Compare the right hand passage at 1:10 to this one from Liszt's Mazeppa at 3:07. I wouldn't be surprised if Busoni was quoting him! The Busoni passage is different rhythmically but the exact same type technically. You can check the scores to make sure.

He was influenced by Liszt that's for sure same passage in the Liszt Amajor i think? I had most of his works in old editions but unfortunately I lost them so now I have only a portion downloaded from internet.Do you know a site where I could download more of Busoni?

The Busoni passage is in G flat major and then sequenced to A flat Major. The Liszt passage is in B flat major, the first right hand chord being a c major triad. You can get a lot of Busoni on IMSLP. Here's the link.